Paper short abstract:

The rise of popular home made semi-professional videos of women dancing mujra, is a result of emergence of digital media, enabling laypersons to make such video in Pakistan. The content of these videos both from the visual to the lyrical reflects the masculine expressions of fantasy and desire.

Paper long abstract:

This proposed study seeks to investigate the rise of home made and semi-professional videos that depicts women dancing mujra, a popular genre in Pakistan. The decade of 90's and later saw the immense widespread use of digital technology in Pakistan. The emergence of digital media, camcorders and mobile phone technology enabled laypersons to make video of themselves or others have been the key factors in the development of semi porn mujra dance videos. It is associated with Punjabi film songs, used in remaking of a private video without the consent of the film producers, in which women would be shown dancing in a garden or in some room of a rented place.

I argue that the cultural code imagines Pakistani society as pious, whereas in contrast, one continue to find ambiguity in the expression of sexual desire defying any sort of mega moral and religious narrative. To bring forward the modes of ambivalence, it is important to deconstruct the layers forming the actual production of the mujra dance videos while analyzing the content of the lyrics and the dance form juxtaposed against the socio-historic background of the culture. The proposed paper will analyze the content of these videos both from the visual to the lyrical. The masculinity is reflected through its expressions of fantasy and desire, inherently complex in the face of overtly patriarchal norms, is projected through the layers of popular culture.